Linguistics, Culture and Subordinate Clauses
An interesting story by Rafaela von Bredow at
Living without Numbers or Time about a remote tribe whose language is totally unique:
"The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists.
Since 1977, Daniel Everett the British ethnologist at the University of Manchester has spent a total of seven years living with the Pirahãs. The small hunting and gathering tribe, with a population of only 310 to 350, has become the centre of a raging debate between linguists, anthropologists and cognitive researchers. Even Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Steven Pinker of Harvard University, two of the most influential theorists on the subject, are still arguing over what it means for the study of human language that the Pirahãs don't use subordinate clauses. Some of the peculiarities of the language are:
The Pirahã only use three pronouns.
They hardly use any words associated with time
Past tense verb conjugations don't exist.
There are no words for colours
The Pirahã do not use subordinate clauses.
The Pirahã appear to have no need for numbers.
The Pirahã do not have a creation myth explaining existence.
No-one paints or tells stories
"Eventually Everett came up with a surprising explanation for the peculiarities of the PirahÃ’s idiom. "The language is created by the culture," says the linguist. He explains the core of PirahÃ’s culture with a simple formula: "Live here and now." The only thing of importance that is worth communicating to others is what is being experienced at that very moment. "All experience is anchored in the presence," says Everett, who believes this carpe-diem culture doesn't allow for abstract thought or complicated connections to the past – limiting the language accordingly.
It is very difficult to conceive of a world without numbers, without stories or even without art. But try to conceive of how full the present must be to leave no room for anything else in our lives.
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